Life In LC

Oregon basketball beats Oregon State 85-75 in Civil War

Carlos Emory scored a career high 21 points off the bench as Oregon took down Oregon State 85-75 on senior night at Matthew Knight Arena. The Ducks came back from a halftime deficit for the sixth time this season to earn their 23rd victory of the year.

“That’s not what we want to do,” Singler said. “We want to be up at halftime, but I think our senior leadership in the second half is really, really good…but we got to switch that, we have to start earlier.”

The win moved the Ducks into sole possession of first place in the Pac-12 and sent seniors Emory, EJ Singler, Tony Woods and Arsalan Kazemi out on top. Woods, Kazemi and Emory each finished in double-figures and Singler finished with nine.

The Ducks jumped out to an early lead in the first half but looked to lose control of the game when Damyean Dotson was injured halfway through the half. The Beavers would go on a run and lead 41-34 at the half behind a phenomenal first half performance from Oregon State’s Roberto Nelson, who had 22 points at the intermission.

Dotson would come out for warmups in the second half but didn’t attempt a shot, instead jogging around and trying to loosen up, but the freshman shooting guard didn’t play in the second half. Altman said the team will use the next few days–including an important off day this weekend—to let Dotson recover.

“He just took a really hard fall,” Altman said. “He worked hard to try and get it loosened up to go but he just couldn’t move…We’re fortunate we’ve got a week, I don’t think he’d play Saturday.”

Things would get worse for the Ducks before they got any better in the second half, but with Oregon State leading by nine the Beavers Eric Moreland threw down a monster dunk that would have put Oregon State up double figures, but Moreland was called for a charge on the play and was then called for a technical foul for standing over Woods after the dunk.

EJ Singler hit both of the technical shots, but the Beavers would lead by two possessions until a Carlos Emory jump shot with 12:51 remaining put the Ducks within two. A wide open three from Dominc Artis—his only shot attempt of the second half—to give Oregon its first lead in almost 15 minutes. The Duck seniors then simply took over, scoring Oregon’s next 25 points.

Among that sequence was a series of three straight dunks by Oregon seniors, all set up by feeds from Singler.

“I just saw Tony getting in good positions down low,” Singler said. “He did a good job of staying with his guy, and after that first one I saw the look in his face and I was like, ‘hey, we’ve got to go back to that’ and he kept on doing it.”

The Ducks weren’t shutting Oregon State down by any means, but 12 second half turnovers from the Beavers allowed Oregon to open up a ten point lead with just under 12:00 left and the Ducks would maintain that cushion over the course of the rest of the game. Oregon also figured out how to defend Nelson in the second half, holding him to just nine points after his explosive first half.

“I thought our awareness was better on him,” Altman said.

Oregon has the weekend off and will play Colorado and Utah on the road next week to close out the regular season.